To Songs We Knew
by The Madmadam
Summary: From his vantage point on the barricade, Enjolras quietly begins to sing. (Bookverse, but based on moment in movie.)


Jean Prouvaire takes the first song. His crystalline tenor cracks through the open air like a flapping cloth, the vibrato quick and bright and equally above and below the pitch. Thread-thin, with a tinnish quality, the timbre of his voice wraps around the words with all the richness the monarchy thought it was alone in keeping close to its breast.

_Do you remember our sweet life,_

_When we were both so young,_

—on the last word he swells, then retracts the sound so the wind nearly seizes it from far, far back in his throat—

_And when we had no other desire in our heads_

_Than to be well-dressed and in love?_

Some blink when it's over; most raise their glasses and cry "Prouvaire!" in an array of answering pitches. Amidst the din Courfeyrac raises his glass to the last line and quips, "Only the latter for Jehan!"

Jehan lowers his head with warm cheeks—from both the praise and the teasing—but a smile that could conquer all royalists. His disordered state of dress marks well his youth. His eyes may not yet be hard and tired as the older ones' are, but he is quicker to bleed with a blood more fervid than any of theirs.

Joly replies with another verse.

_When, by adding your age to my age,_

_We could not count forty years between us,_

_And when, in our humble and tiny household,_

_Everything was spring to us even in winter._

The strains of reminisce fill all circumstances and streak away the tears of time. Voices, lone or joined, between Courfeyrac's shaky baritone, Bahorel's bass, conquer every attention and lend to the adding passersby their smiles.

Bahorel stands up straight, a head taller than most of the crowd, and also sings:

_Fair days! Manuel was proud and wise,_

_Paris sat at sacred banquets,_

_Joy launched thunderbolts, and your corsage_

_Had a pin on which I pricked myself._

Enjolras is not young, as fully he looks it. He stays silent.

What started as a series of solos sparks into a chorus, and drink sloshes over the sides of glasses clutched high in the air. The slowness of mind, half from the drink and half from the memory, bends the pitch in a pleasant manner. Opera is too pristine for the barricade.

Below him, Combeferre smiles.

Head quickly up, Enjolras hides his shock behind a single raised eyebrow when the air is halted with his baritone.

_Everything gazed upon you. A briefless lawyer,_

_When I took you to the Prado to dine,_

_You were so beautiful that the roses_

_Seemed to me to turn round,_

Here Courfeyrac cuts across, barking out the words in delight:

_And I heard them say: Is she not beautiful!_

_How good she smells! What billowing hair!_

_Beneath her mantle she hides a wing._

_Her charming bonnet is hardly unfolded._

Another gentleman sweeps up the next verse. He is one of the few others besides who hunched in the corner of the wine-shop to sing. He is a small and sprightly man, balding a little at his crown, possessing a fine, clear, tenor. His small eyes rise and stay level to meet the eyes of the others in proximity.

_I wandered with thee, pressing thy supple arm._

_The passers-by thought that love bewitched_

_Had wedded, in our happy couple,_

_The gentle month of April to the air month of May._

Courfeyrac slings an arm around the stranger as everyone takes up the next few verses. Combined they weld together the freedom of youth.

_We lived, concealed, content, with closed doors,_

_Devouring love, that sweet forbidden fruit._

_My mouth had not uttered a thing_

_When thy heart had already responded._

Their voices fill the space between them as in an amphitheater, breathing life into the picture of crates and barrels and rubbish, with a roar all forces of nature above ground cannot quell, and Enjolras almost smiles. Involuntarily his weary back straightens in response. Rather than loud, it is overwhelmingly present, filling all corners of knowledge and feeling alike. As always he listens for Patria, whose high-pitched laughter fills the air with anticipation. He doesn't move. He doesn't have to look to see Bousset's arm swung clumsily over Joly's opposite shoulder, Joly bright-eyed with appreciation for his absent mistress, Jehan's quotidian venture near tears, Courfeyrac clapping Bahorel's back.

It is the sound of freedom's footmen. There is a price for such bargains, but for Enjolras it's all right. He hasn't planned out a thing, not after fixing tomorrow for a future broken from the present whence it must, by necessity, come. It is too difficult to hope for survival. If death doesn't come for them today, it surely will in a future insurrection. The others knew their chances well but pooled their lives to a greater existence, one that could be reached by many, including the _abaisse_.

Enjolras returns his thoughts to the lyrics sung. He daren't think it's because he wants to remember. There are other things to remember: cartridge numbers and scrap materials, who takes which watch, names of the friends who had joined them, a prediction of when more friends would come to their aid and in how great a number. Yet when Enjolras hears all of the smiles and sees the things that seemed to have little to do with the revolution, every little detail is relevant to his cause, even Grantaire's snores from the wine shop. A few verses join from the streets sometimes, met with cheers of the Amis.

It was the fraternity they embodied that would explode into an enlightened world that Patria cradled in her arms.

Never turning his head from the videttes, Enjolras aids the colicky wind with his own. His voice is halting and breathy and wavering, at that balance of effort and silence, and he wonders if any sounds escape him.

Combeferre breaks off and peers over heads and of the wine-shop.

Enjolras' mouth freezes in the middle of forming a word. He feels eyes at his back.

He raises an eyebrow, but there's something strangely R in the way one side of his lip curls. The reminisce returns his eyes firmly to the videttes, who haven't idled at all.

Everything surges forward from the back of his mind, from Courfeyrac's jokes to Jehan's poems to Combeferre's counsel to Grantaire's short-term memory and beyond. There is a slight shift in his eyes, and he straightens his shoulders over his gun. From his vantage point over the videttes, Enjolras continues to sing.

He feels Combeferre look up at him. Together their lips curl at the irony.

_I have read Plato, but nothing of it remains with me._

_Better than Malebranche and then Lamennais_

_Thou didst demonstrate to me celestial goodness_

_With a flower which thou gavest to me._

Then Bousset's ringing high tenor bursts over them all, toppling Joly over double with laughter.

_And those great misfortunes which made us laugh!_

_Thy cuff scorched, thy boa lost!_

_And that dear portrait of the divine Shakespeare_

_Which we sold one evening that we might sup!_

No one at first hears Feuilly's voice. Indeed his placid face gives no indication that he is singing.

_I was a beggar and thou wert charitable._

_I kissed thy fresh round arms in haste._

_A folio Dante served us as a table_

_On which to eat merrily a centime's worth of chestnuts._

Feuilly gets an even greater show of pride and affection for his actual erstwhile suffering. Courfeyrac places both his arms around his shoulders. Prouvaire grasps his arm and jerks his gaze up to him. Tears dance in his eyes.

The revolutionists' eyes idly glaze, though little absinthe has been passed around. The day sneaks up on the Friends, rising along their semi-drunken swinging backs, and the videttes mutter and shift.

More verses are visited but lost amidst the company each man has with the other, a thousand sung notes all its own. Enjolras loses them as he trains his eyes back on the videttes.

Finally Combeferre steps forward, eyes on Enjolras. Jehan's voice drops three dynamic levels at the sudden movement, and his eyes dart from side to side to see who still sings. One by one the voices die until only Courfeyrac and Bousset are left. Courfeyrac rises and joins Combeferre, leaving Bousset tapering off for three bars. He slows and stops, grinning sheepishly.

Then everybody shares the doubled-over laugh, joined in tears of mirth and wonder. Their voices rise in one last tutti:

_Dost thou recall our innumerable joys,_

_And all those fichus changed to rags?_

_Oh! what sighs from our hearts full of gloom_

_Fluttered forth to the heavenly depths!_

There, alone, at his vigil, Enjolras blinks at an unfriendly image that has suddenly entered his head.

His friends, bloodied and still, save for trembling blue lips:

_Dost thou recall our innumerable joys,_

—they murmur from the ground beneath them—

_And all those fichus changed to rags?_

_Oh! what sighs from our hearts full of gloom_

_Fluttered forth to the heavenly depths!_

**Okay, don't kill me. I'm a faithful bookverse writer. Even if I did want to incorporate something, it'd normally be from the stage musical (such as the title for this story**,** from "Drink With Me"), not the movie. However, one point did captivate me during "Drink With Me," when Enjolras was strangely singing (yet still apart from the others who had split off). My mind returned to the passage in which les****Amis,**** save Enjolras****,**** went off and sang together****.**** I got an idea, and here it is. Many thanks to hansbmd who told me to get off my butt and finish this two-year-old scrap (in a far nicer manner of course)! About 200-300 words of polishing later, ta-da!**

**I used Google Translate on this passage, so try not to hate me too much for not knowing my French. Tried to match each verse to the Ami I thought it fit best. Some are absent.**

**If you're curious, I love _How Green Was My Valley_, and a passage in there heavily inspired this story:**

**"Sing, then. Sing, indeed, with shoulders back, and head up so that song might go to the roof and beyond to the sky. Mass on mass of tone, with a hard edge, and rich with quality, every single note a carpet of colour woven from basso profundo, and basso, and baritone, and alto, and tenor, and soprano, and alto and mezzo, and contralto, singing and singing, until life and all things living are become a song. O, Voice of Man, organ of most lovely might."**

**Isn't that lovely?**

**Please review and tell me what you thought of this!**


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